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This sun-drenched French production set in St. Tropez, one of the first for that country shot in color and scope, is famous — or notorious, if you prefer — for several reasons. For starters, it is the film that launched the career of Roger Vadim, a member of the French new wave in cinema who looked at his films as more of a fashion and art design show than as a way to actually tell a story. His tendency to romance beautiful women, them feature them in his films wearing as little as he could get away with, is among his many great contributions to global society. And here, in his debut film, he decided to give the world Brigitte Bardot.

I said when I reviewed the final Vadim-Bardot collaboration the dreary-yet-intriguing Don Juan (Or if Don Juan were a Woman), that a film of that sorry caliber was not the proper place to discuss the life and times of Brigitte Bardot, that she deserved something a little more impressive. Well, you can’t find a much better place to discuss her than here, the film that launched her to superstardom. She had been working in film since 1952, but this was the one that turned her into the endearing cinematic icon she would become. She started out training in music and dance but quickly moved into modeling and, as seems to often be the case, film. During the first year of her film career she met Vadim, and they planned to wed just as soon as it was legal (she was 17 at the time). Hey, it was France after all. Their marriage only lasted five years. Vadim was a legendary womanizer, after all, and a young Jane Fonda was waiting to become his next muse.

But the Bardot juggernaut was rolling, and she became a huge hit in America despite remaining a wholly French performer. Her photos and dubbed movies created a sensation and outraged Puritanical thinkers who were shocked at the level of sauciness her films often displayed. Yeah, that old chestnut. Will grumpy, uptight American blowhards ever get tired of being shocked and outraged at everything? This overblown reaction to everything, this desperate attempt from so many people to seem shocked and outraged by everything just so they can create a scandal or a sensation where none exists, is perhaps one of my least favorite things. It would be different if the shock was ever genuine, but no, it’s always something concocted purely to make waves in the media, who being utterly and fantastically idiotic and useless and an insult to the entire history of journalism, lap it up like mad dogs (if, indeed, mad dogs lap things up more fervently than regular dogs. You know what I mean). And lest you think I’m aiming my criticism purely at “the Conservative right,” let me throw into the ring that colossally moronic parade of indignation that was parades through the Left simply because Dick Cheney told someone to go fuck themselves, or way back when G.W. called a NY Times reporter an asshole. Or any of the countless times some innocuous something or other sends a money-hungry lawyer into fits of hysteria because it might offend someone somewhere, possibly.

Man alive, it’s enough to send me into fits of moral outrage. We live now in a society where sexuality comes in two flavors: either we’re totally repressed or we’re totally pornographic. That middle ground where things are playful and fun and teasing and healthy seems to have been eliminated from our concept of sex. We’re either uptight moral watchdogs fuming over some pop star’s boob or we’re ten-year-olds in thongs freak dancing in some lewd video full of sweaty strippers and guys in needlessly baggy trousers. We’re a nation of extremes growing ever further apart, even though in reality, I would bet most people are somewhere in the middle wishing the nutjobs on either edge would just shut the hell up. But that’s not going to happen, and as long as the middle doesn’t speak up and increase the noise even more, we just have to endure the crazies around us and hope that they keep canceling each other out as we remind ourselves most of them don’t even believe what they’re screaming about. They’re just trying to get more time on television.

So what does any of this have to do with Brigitte Bardot, Roger Vadim, and And God Created Woman? Well, it’s that same old story, though I guess it was newer in 1956 than it is now, but it was still pretty old even then. The film opens with a playful nude profile of BB as she sunbathes amid sheets of flapping laundry. This is back when people hung things out on lines to dry, you know. This was pushing what you could show in any film that wasn’t playing in the grindhouse and featuring a plotline about an escaped gorilla that terrorizes a nudist colony, but the French seemed to roll with it (the nudity, that is; not hanging laundry out to dry). Say what you will about their snootiness. At least they know not to get totally outraged at something like a naked butt. That could be their national motto.

When the film sought release in the United States, however, we trotted out our usual shock and outrage. Or rather, the handful of cranky sons of bitches in charge of such things trotted it out on our behalf without ever stopping to inquire as to whether the greater portion of America was actually going to be as offended as they were telling us we were. But even more so than a glimpse of Bardot’s behind, the powers in charge of national outrage were outraged, it seems, simply by the naked sensuality in the film, even though it wasn’t accompanied by actual nakedness, and by the open depiction of a woman who is at ease with her sexuality, her own body, and not prone to play the demure and loyal housewife. It seems, almost, that Vadim’s picture was made specifically for this sort of reaction. It is the story of a sexually liberated woman named Juliete who is perfectly nice and friendly but, because of her tendency to do things like mambo with them colored folks, is considered a trollop by the small-minded villagers around her. Conversely, the men in the film are all highly regarded and can do no wrong because they are successful and society-minded men, never mind how rotten they may actually be. Their transgressions can be forgiven since they are men, and well-dressed men at that.

Compounding Juliete’s problem is that she is an orphan adopted by a stern couple that doesn’t approve of her free spiritedness and are planning to send her back to the orphanage unless she settles down and gets married. I didn’t know you could send grown adults back to the orphanage, but I guess there are a lot of things I don’t know. She eventually finds a man she could love, but he treats her like a one-night stand and takes off the next day. His younger, more sensitive brother takes pity on her and falls in love, and eventually the two are married against the wishes of nearly everyone. Things get more complex with a wealthy shipping magnate takes an interest in her as well, and even more complicated when the older brother returns with romance on his mind. Although the men think of Juliete as a “destroyer of men,” Vadim’s film is positively on the side of the heroine. She’s the victim not just of opportunistic men, but also of the backward attitudes of those around her.

Though the film is somewhat sympathetic to Juliete, she is not without her faults. She is unable to remain faithful to her husband, though you could say this was simply because she was more or less forced into the marriage by circumstance. She seems less malevolent than she is simply innocent and ignorant of the fact that she, as a woman, is expected to do anything other than behave like the men around her, which means she should be free to flirt and sleep with whomever she wants. She comes across at times and thoughtless and impetuous, sometimes selfish, and as unable to control herself as the men around her. Like them, she wants to disregard any responsibility she should take for her own actions. All of them deserve a good kick in the bum to wake them up. However, it’s not Juliete fault the men turn into a bunch of leering goons every time she comes around — even though that seems to be the pervading (and damnably persistent) attitude of society at large, where the woman is always to blame when a man gives in to temptation or acts like a vicious cur.

It became difficult, if not impossible, to separate the movie from the controversy it caused. Well, it’s been a few years since 1956, so it’s easier now to look at the film on its own merits, though it certainly gets points still for having caused such a stir. And separate from said controversy, it’s an enjoyable film for me. Vadim would become famous for his art design and composition, and though this film lacks the eye-popping op-art madness of films like Barbarella, it’s still supremely gorgeous. Vadim takes full advantage of color and the richness of the lush Mediterranean setting. He alternates between painfully composed art shots and wild naturalism, using the wide scope format to its fullest to convey a sense of serene beauty and haunting desolation amid the color-drenched French seaside.

Of course, let’s not kid ourselves, since this is a Vadim picture. It is a serviceable psycho-sexual drama, but like most of his films, it’s rather sloppy in the narrative department and wanders without a care between art and exploitation. The plot is breezy at its heaviest, and the few times it attempts to inject serious drama into the proceedings are clumsy. It’s unevenly paced and drags in spots, but I’m partial to a slower film these days anyway. And of course, every single reviewer will refer to the formerly shocking scenes like the bare bottom or the mambo finale as “rather tame by today’s standards,” which has always been a phrase that I don’t like. Can’t say exactly why, other than to relate it to my even more fervent distaste for the “looks dated” criticism. Maybe it’s because it just seems stupid. Okay, we get it. Standards have changed in the past half a century. That’s not exactly a news flash. Personally, I think this film remains plenty daring and sexy, if not for what it shows then certainly for what it has to say. The “woman in touch with her sexuality” line has been trotted out countless times since this film as if it remains something new, daring, or unique. It’s much more enjoyable to go back to a film where it was new, daring, and unique. What the film manages to do with its daring, however, is where the wheels start to come off.

The film seems confused about what to do with its theme and often comes across as reactionary as it is progressive. It seems unable to make up its mind whether it wants to stick by Bardot’s character or pull the ol’ morality tale ending and teach us all a valuable lesson about the wanton ways of womanhood. If it seems hesitant to support the woman, it’s also hesitant to condemn the men, resulting in a film full of mixed messages. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is often campy and stilted. Vadim was never one for a stellar script, after all. Rather than try to decipher the message the film itself seems unable to bring into focus, it’s best to look at the film as something of a time capsule, of masculinity on the cusp of a new era trying to come to grips with a new breed of woman it fears and cannot fully comprehend.

But Brigitte is the main attraction, and she truly shines here in a film that could almost be summarized as a series of provocative postcards, or as a love letter to the form of Brigitte Bardot. She’s playful, charismatic, and hints at a touch of devilishness. It is quite easy to understand why the men around her are willing to throw their lives into disarray (even as they blame their weakness on her) for her affections. She is hypnotic and possessed of a quality few women have been able to convey onscreen. Her supporting cast is quite good too, including a turn by future James Bond villain, Curd Jurgens, here as the charming older captain of industry Carradine and later in The Spy Who Loved Me giving Roger Moore and Barbara Bach a hard time. But everyone else pales in comparison to BB, who was one of the few mode-turned-actress sex kitten types with real acting ability behind the pout to die for. Her mambo madness during the film’s finale is a sight to behold, that’s for sure.

Ultimately, the film’s aspirations slightly outreach its ability to deliver, but we’re left, if nothing else, at least with a film that had aspirations and looks damn good while trying to attain them. Bardot is stunning, the cinematography is divine, and the story may not be perfect, but it’s still a satisfying film for me. Is it art or cheap titillation? Well, does it really even matter? Is there a difference? As I’ve always maintained, what counts in a film, and with any sort of medium isn’t whether or not some body of strangers pronounces it as “art” or as “important.” What matters is, “did you enjoy it?” and “did it entertain or move you?” And you know, I did and it did, and that’s that. Like any Roger Vadim film it’s flawed, and things really start to fall apart the closer you examine the confusing messages behind the pretty pictures and see a movie that manages to be sexy, sexist, and sexually liberating all at once, that somehow is pro- and anti-feminist at the same time. In the end, what you have to remember is that this train wreck of moral messages is simply more proof that even at the beginning of his career, Vadim was far more interested in the image than the story. And God Created Woman emerges as an exploitation film wrapped in a art film — something that would become Vadim’s trademark. You can’t necessarily take it seriously, but that’s probably for the best. If you did, it would just make your head spin.

Bardot would go on a spectacular career full of many bad movies and a few more good ones. Her marriage to Vadim crumbled shortly after the completion of this film. In the end, the fact that she was reportedly a rather kind and generous person got the better of her, and relentless tabloid attention (you didn’t think those were new inventions, did you), crazed fans breaking into her home, and ultimately demonization simply for the fact that was sexy and willing to show the fact off, drove her to the brink of a breakdown. She retired from film in the early 1970s and did her best to disappear entirely from the public eye, eventually becoming active in the fight for animal rights. Vadim would reunite with her for her final picture, and then in 1988 go on to remake/rewrite And God Created Woman with Rebecca DeMornay in the lead.